Watching the ongoing trainwreck that is Stacey Campfield blogging himself out of elected office has been mildly interesting the last several weeks, to say the least. Especially for someone who generally has as little interest in politics as yours truly. I think a central focus in politics should be trying to sway moderate and apolitical opinion (such as my own) your way, not totally disgust and turn those folks off… but hey, that’s just my opinion.
I don’t “do” politics as a general rule. Anyone who knows me knows this to be true, and even though many of my friends are very into that sort of thing, they like me the way I am; I’m fine with what they’re into; it works out. I have just never been the sort to comment on and discuss much, online or off, political issues or anything remotely political - not on my blog nor much of anywhere else.
Before all his recent circus stunts, the ONLY reason I knew who Campfield was in the first place is because of a tacky and done in very poor taste, snarky and attention-grabbing stunt on his blog a while back, the resulting fallout of which led me to the conclusion that if you ask him the age-old question what color the sky is in his world, the answer is probably going to be fuschia or chartreuse, or some color no one in the whole entire world (not even the Department of Defense!) has ever heard of.
I’ll not bore you all with the story in its entirety, but I do think that if you’re an elected public servant, and you’re made aware that your blogging behavior leads a registered voter who really has little interest in politics (key words there) - and who also will likely be a resident of the general locale you represent (more key words) in the not-too-far-away future - to not only express disgust and horror over such behavior, but to state in no implicit terms that they (the registered voter) will now make a POINT (key word!) in the future of working for the other side in hopes of seeing you defeated in any future election endeavors…
Well, I’m just saying that maybe it’d be a good idea to step back and take a good hard look at and review one’s judgment, behavior, and actions, in such a case. Maybe even admit one used poor judgment and bad taste, but you know - whatever. Campfield’s pretty much exhibited a history of dropping bombs and then running away from them, not responding to the opinions and viewpoints he doesn’t like, sulking like a spoiled child or crying foul in the face of opposing or negative public opinion, and especially not apologizing when an apology is due (or way overdue), so I don’t expect much from him when I see he’s pulled another one of his stunts.
I think also, if I read correctly, that I’ve even been banned from posting further comments on his blog. I hope that’s true, at least that’s the way I read it.
Yes, me! Banned from commenting on someone else’s blog! Really!! Can you believe it? Isn’t that hilarious? Everyone that knows me in the online blogging community is seriously having a heart attack right now. (There’s probably a lesson to be learned there, too - I think it’s kinda like banning Shirley Temple as opposed to, oh, banning Charles Manson or Bin Laden or Hitler or something - but it’ll go over his head like most everything else.) I think it’s a kick, and I honestly couldn’t be happier about it, if it’s indeed true - that the only person Stacey Campfield has ever banned from commenting on his blog is a 5′2″, blonde, WASP as they come, totally apolitical chick who’s a product of some of the most conservative Republican families in West Tennessee, with more ties to the same in East Tennessee; who doesn’t even write about politics or social issues but writes about music and Jolly Ranchers and Sweet Tarts and cats and dogs! Is that not a total hoot?!?!?
I just think it’s a riot. Not to mention that Campfield himself may well have created a monster he’d rather not have due to his poor judgment, since suffice it to say I am becoming decidedly a little less apolitical and apathetic about such things as the Campfield Carnival goes on.
It’s kind of a shame, really. The initial issue Campy and I butted heads on could have well been put aside and in the past, if he’d done the right thing and admitted he’d probably made a mistake and an error in judgment, and we could have all moved on and I’d have forgotten about him soon enough. Even worse, dozens of other folks on both sides of the left and right were telling him, or commenting elsewhere in the community, the very same thing I did - he had done something that was in very poor taste for anyone to have done, and it just wasn’t cool. I initially relatively respectfully requested he do the right thing and remove it from his blog. I got snarky patented Campfield response in return and a refusal to do so, so you know, whatever. If you can’t be a man and own up to mistakes and poor judgment when, not only someone you don’t care to hear it from, but dozens of others in the community are saying the same - AND gotta get all snarky and sarcastic about it too? All bets are off and I don’t have to try to be tactful and attempt to politely request anymore. Be a gentleman or be a weasel; be a real elected official and respond to positive AND negative, rather than being a coward and editing and deleting and banning.
And it’s his blog, yep. But I think it’s probably his own worst enemy. I don’t think he understands that if he’d just said, “Nope, sorry,” then I probably would have just said, “Well, OK, sorry to hear that,” and moved on. It could have easily become a non-issue and mostly forgotten. It was everything ELSE he said in his response that was the problem… which I nowadays know is just par for the course with Campfield. He is a master at shooting himself in the foot; or, better yet when it comes to blogging, sticking his foot in his mouth. And the amazing thing is it’s like he goes out of way to stick his foot in his mouth when he really didn’t even have to go that far, time and time again! It’s just really and truly incredible.
Like I said - and I’m but one person and one instance out of what has probably been hundreds, maybe thousands, of really not-too-smart Campfield blogging and commenting and responding moves in the blogosphere - blogging and commenting his way right out of elected office, it seems. It’s kind of surreal, really.
So here’s a point - it’s those of us who don’t really give much of a flying you-know-what for the most part about politics that those in elected public service should probably be most concerned with. Bad judgment and poor behavior will likely not only send us voting on the other side, but if you act out bad enough and display poor enough taste that even the politically interested folks in your own community on BOTH sides of the liberal/conservative divide are saying what you did wasn’t cool - and then, us non-political folk not only making a point to vote against you now and in the future, but making a point of pledging to work to see you defeated from here on out? That’s just probably not a real great thing. No politician in his or her right mind would want their name attached to situations like that.
To illustrate even further just how much Campfield’s blogging behavior is akin to shooting himself in the foot time and time again: I may be personally rather apolitical myself but, again, I come from two West Tennessee families that have in the past been extremely active and supportive in the Republican party, have ties to a third such family in East Tennessee, AND my former longtime boss, whose family is like my own, is still currently very active in conservative Republican circles in Shelby County as are other members of that family. Certainly the name Stacey Campfield is going to get circulated among those circles… but likely not in the way he would probably hope.
Word of mouth can be the most fabulous publicity, but it can also be very dangerous publicity that can work against you. What you say, how you conduct yourself, and ESPECIALLY how you respond to others is SO important if you want to be a successful elected public official. I’m a private citizen with no public service aspirations, I can pretty much say what I want and do as I please on my blog and in dealing with other bloggers. But if I wasn’t? Whole other story.
Using good judgment in what he posts and how he responds to others is not Campfield’s forte, and he rather habitually offends probably the worst possible people to be offending, especially if he has political aspirations higher than the level where he is now. Like thousands of State of Tennessee employees. Or another blogger who, albeit unbeknownst to him at the time initially, has ties to some of the most influential members of his own party, not only statewide but in his own locale.
There’s where he makes mistakes. As a public official who has chosen to blog amongst that same public, every word and every response should be chosen more carefully, because to do otherwise, you know not who you might offend. Every poster and every respondent - unless they have made it clear they’re absolutely against you and on the other side - should be treated as a potential vote; or at least a potential person who might have ties to someone or someones you absolutely do not want to piss off, basically. To do otherwise and just keep jumping in feet first with your responses and blindly spouting off (or so very obviously avoiding responding to current discussions) without a thought of who might be on the other side of the monitor reading - that’s just dumb. And could be political suicide.
Even though I had no clue who he was prior to December 2006, I’ve read enough and talked with enough folks to know he’s a grandstander, specializing in stunt legislation, basically. It’s like he’s continually jumping up and down trying to get the attention on himself and the spotlight shined his way with all kinds of crazy ridiculous stunts that just wind up clogging the Tennessee state government works, and it just makes you want to say, “Sit down, Junior, you’ll get your spotlight one of these days likely when you do something to deserve it and don’t try to FORCE it on you.” Except I think all his grandstanding (and certainly his blogging) will send him out of office in due time, so the likelihood of that happening in the future seems kinda slim.
Ah, but the Campy carnival just keeps rolling along.
I slept for 15 hours on Saturday because I was exhausted and had a humongous headache, and woke up with an even bigger headache. After popping a couple of Tylenol and willing myself for another hour to either get better or die, I finally got around to blog- and feed-reading for the day to see what all I’d missed during my self-induced coma.
There was this, and then there was this real mess (my most recent response to Campfield being around the 3:51 a.m. 2/26 mark, unless Frank chooses to delete it). Which that whole comment thread was curious (on Sunday afternoon anyway), if for no other reason the lack of participation by the blog author and the multiple (read: constant and repeated) instances of I’m-blogging-and-commenting-my-way-right-out-of-public-office by “The Rep“.
This same “public servant” purposely started a firestorm a couple of weeks ago here, which bled over to here and resulted in the longest thread in NIT history, and failed to respond to any of it in a manner befitting an elected public official; in fact, his only direct response was a snarky “:)” emoticon posted in the milieu of discussion on NIT that afternoon. He also has not, to date and to my knowledge, issued a very necessary apology to another blogger towards whom Campfield made veiled threats against their job, simply because that blogger disagreed with the Campfield point of view. In the course of the blogging firestorm he laid in place and then basically ran and hid from and refused to respond further to, he actually had the chutzpah to state that a state employee doesn’t have a “real job”. I’m sure this is a viewpoint all of the thousands of State of Tennessee employees are going to be interested in hearing. Since I have a parent who is a longtime employee in state education of relatively high rank and since I was once a UT employee myself, I sure was interested in that statement. I think it might be my mission this year to see that every Tennessee state employee finds out who Stacey Campfield is and what he thinks of their jobs. Although I will say that a (now very overdue) apology from Campfield to the person who deserves it might make me change my mind.
Maybe. I don’t know, seems to me like the thousands of State of Tennessee employees there are should be aware of snarky insults that someone who is an elected state official made about their state jobs. Not to mention the fact that as an elected state representative… doesn’t that make The Rep himself a state employee? At least part-time?
In any case, I have pretty much said as much that without that overdue apology to the blogger he threatened, I will do what I can to make certain all Tennessee state employees learn who Stacey Campfield is as well as what he thinks of their jobs, not to mention seeing that every registered Republican I know that I’m related to, almost related to, will eventually be related to, or might as well be related to - and there’s a lot of them, and in East Tennessee as well as West! - gets the 411 on Stacey Campfield… what damage hasn’t already been done anyway.
But the thing is, really, I don’t really think I have to do anything anyway. Dude’s already well on the way to blogging himself out of office; past it, in fact, it would appear. Somebody close to him that cares shoulda taken the blogging steering wheel out of his hands a while ago, ‘cos he’s just driving himself right on off the cliff right back into the private sector, at least that’s how it looks from here. And from the looks of probably several hundred other blogs (not to mention other modes of information), I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that thinks so.
Even before all that melee with his purposely set firestorms and state employee insulting began, though, there was the matter of his recently posted “rules for comments” on his blog, which is further incredibly laughable. Look, if one can’t take any heat - i.e., if one only wants to hear what they want to hear, and not ALL feedback - then one should get out of the elected public servant kitchen, because one is NOT serving the public.
And one should probably get out of the blogging kitchen too… which is really what this all comes down to.
What Stacey Campfield should probably do:
- Hire a good publicist who is neutral and doesn’t have any real partisan leanings in any direction.
- Listen to that publicist when told to stop “traditional blogging” because it’s turning into his own political suicide.
- Put up a website of his own that is not a blog and write all he wants about whatever without the necessity of (or the expectation that he will be) interacting with the public, as would be with traditional blogging. Because man, he’s just bad at it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Or do none of the above and just keep blogging himself right out of elected office. That’s okay with me. I kind of find it an interesting trainwreck to witness.
Am I picking on Stacey Campfield? Maybe, probably. Didn’t really care to post like this until recently.
And the truth is, this post in particular could well have been avoided. Stacey Campfield knows I think he owes two people a very big, and very sincere apology, and that there’s something on his blog akin to little better than sensational tabloid journalism that has no business being there if one claims to be an upright and decent gentleman and human being, or is not a judge in a court of law. Frankly, I’d settle for the most recently necessitated single apology, but I have some doubts that it’s ever gonna happen. Most of the rest of us live in a world where there’s a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do, and Stacey Campfield just doesn’t seem to live in that world or truly understand either.
I should probably state, too, in light of the more recent discussions - I really don’t have any quarrel with, or very strong opinion at this time, on Terry Frank, and I say that because I just have not read enough to form any big strong opinion. But just from reading recent comments over there, as with his own self sticking in his foot in his mouth time and again, I will say that Stacey Campfield’s rather overtly large presence in her current situation and his comments and responses and postings look to me to be hurting her case much more than they are any help.
So, can I just remind everybody one more time? I DON’T DO POLITICS. Nor do I profess to be a writer about much of anything except music, hard and sour candy, BBQ, ex-boyfriends, dogs & cats, and a few other nonessential, totally mediocre subjects that really probably aren’t important to anyone but myself and maybe a handful of others, many of whom have known me for over half my life. I didn’t start a blog ten years ago to make important social statements; I started a blog so I wouldn’t have to e-mail forty or fifty or sixty people the same thing over and over again about whatever was going on with me on any given day.
If I’m not to be taken seriously because I usually write about music and goofy stuff, hey, that’s your call. I’d have to guess, though, that most people that read the more politically-related blogs already have their minds made up to begin with. It’s the people that don’t read political and social issue-related blogs that might not have their minds made up, though, the kind of folks who might read blogs like mine. Something to think about, right?
And it’s wild and ironic, too, that I am even in a position where I can even influence some pretty hardcore serious Republican and conservative registered Tennessee voters, as well as others, against Campfield’s cause simply because of who I happen to be related to or have other ties to. But that just goes to kinda show you that one should look before they leap, think before they speak, and be careful of jumping into potentially hot and sticky pots feet first. There’s a lesson to be learned there, but I’m pretty sure such things go over Campfield’s head as most things seem to.
Anyway, I know my more politically-minded and interested friends are just overjoyed right now that I’m even the least bit interested in writing about such things. This is all insanely ironic and crazy and I can’t believe I’m even writing about some fruit loop politician.
But - it’s important. Because I’m usually mostly uninterested, and probably so are some of you, too. Or, like me, you’re one of those that politicians and their people usually don’t try very hard to reach - when really we’re the ones they should be trying hardest to reach. Or at least certainly not offending, and/or making themselves look ridiculous, right off the bat.
So as long as you have read this - whoever you are and whatever your opinion is, and even if you’re not in Tennessee - if you’ve read this and will remember the name Stacey Campfield now and in the future? I’ve done most of what needed to be done already. The rest is up to y’all.
So, Campfield supporters, go forth and multiply… well, if you can. The rest of y’all - you know what to do (or not to do).
Time will tell if I’m right or not, but I really do sincerely believe Stacey Campfield is blogging himself right smack out of public office. I guess we’ll see, and there’s also probably a really good reason other legislators don’t do such as he does. (Among other things, they probably have publicity people that very smartly tell them NOT to.)
But whether or not he indeed does blog himself out of office, the carnival/slash/freak show is still something to see. Pass the popcorn, I got a trainwreck to watch.
.
Postscript: For more reading on the Carnival That Is Stacey Campfield’s Career and his multitude of grandstanding stunt legislation attempts, I found this yesterday while reading around the tubes. It’s wonderful, hilarious (though you almost really wish it wasn’t since, after all, he IS supposed to be an elected representative in the state in which I have lived my entire life, sigh) - AND there’s lots of excellent back past links as well. Enjoy!
